


seeing everything for the first time again

by CycloneRachel



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Minor Canonical Character(s), One Shot, Shippy Gen, Supergirl (TV 2015) Season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22746193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CycloneRachel/pseuds/CycloneRachel
Summary: prompt from peskyburgers: "any ship + just…stay for the night."
Relationships: Querl Dox & Winn Schott Jr.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	seeing everything for the first time again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fairyroses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairyroses/gifts).



> happy birthday Julianne! I hope you have/had a good day! and I'm sorry I couldn't get the latest chapter of Pay the Asking Price done today, I will get it done soon I promise, but I hope this is also good.
> 
> also yes this is another angsty platonic-because-Winn-is-married-but-he-still-cares-for-Brainy Winndox-ish fic set after 5x11, because I love these two and I want to see more things where they're friends and can help each other with what they're going through. Especially now, with Brainy, because it's what he deserves.

It’s the crying, Winn thinks, that really gets to him.

Because, even in the short time they’ve been in each other’s orbits, they’ve been in several stressful situations together, and Brainy hasn’t cried before this. Not when Supergirl was in a coma, not when Pestilence spread her plague over National City and infected Winn and Alex, not during the entire Worldkiller situation, not when he came back and explained that one of his evil relatives had released yet another plague, this one targeting all AIs in the future.

Winn, for his part, had done his best to hold things together himself during those times, but he wasn’t ashamed to admit that he was still human, and they still got to him.

(Especially, sandwiched into that time, his father’s legacy coming back yet again to haunt him- something that Brainy, conveniently enough, hadn’t been there for.)

But Winn doesn’t hold that against him, just like he doesn’t blame him for the dirt he bugged, what feels like a thousand years ago. There’s no way he can be mad at Brainy now, for anything- not when all he can imagine is his devastated face, tears running down it, after Winn told him he was still his friend.

Which is why, during game night, Winn can’t seem to take an eye off the clock.

Kara’s too polite to mention it, and Alex waits until William, Nia, and Kelly have all eventually excused themselves and gone home to ask.

“Winn? Are you okay?”

Winn shakes his head, but smiles all the same.

“I’m fine.” He says. “Really good, actually. Happy to be back, and all, thanks for having me at game night.”

“We’re happy that you could be here.” Kara answers. “And that you’ve decided to stay a little longer- especially because I was thinking we could do karaoke tomorrow.”

“That sounds great, Kara.” Winn tells her, but he looks up at the clock again, and Alex follows his gaze.

“You know, you don’t have to stay around if you don’t want to, Winn.” She says. “The keys to your apartment are in your room at the DEO, we’ve kept both maintained, just in case… if you ever wanted to visit again.”

“It’s not that.” He says. “I… it’s Brainy. I invited him, but he refused- said he had a lot of work to do. He looked really stressed, and I’m just worried about him.”

Alex places a hand on his arm.

“Yeah, me too.” She says. “He’s not telling me anything.”

Winn’s heart hurts, remembering how much Brainy revealed to him, and it’s enough to bring tears to his eyes.

“Sorry.”

Kara looks down, murmuring something that sounds to Winn like _Rao be with him_.

“Tell him we both are.” She says. “If you want to go see him, I mean.”

“His mind is about as impossible to read as Kara’s, I’m afraid.” J’onn says. “But I, too, am… concerned.”

Winn stands up, gathers what he has, and hugs his friends again.

“I’ll pass it on.” He says. “Night, everyone.”

~

“Brainy?” Winn says, knocking on one wall of the Watchtower, careful that he isn’t touching the wall with all the callsigns and alerting half the heroes on that panel to come there when they aren’t needed. “You alive?”

He barely speaks, but Winn can still hear him.

“I’m here, Winn.” He says. “How was the game night?”

“Everyone misses you, if that’s any consolation.” Winn answers. “Even Nia said so, although that was only after a while. And Kara and Alex and J’onn… they told me they were worried about you.”

“Tell them they have nothing to worry about.” Brainy says. “I am… uninhibited now, able to solve problems with more ease than I once was. And thanks to your encouragement, I have already begun devising a way that I can continue working with Lex Luthor, while at the same time staying ahead of him and finding my own way to defeat Leviathan.”

Winn smiles, but he can tell that Brainy still seems… off. Just like he had before.

“What do you mean, uninhibited?” he asks, and when Brainy doesn’t answer, he says, “You know, if you’re still not okay, you can tell me.”

Brainy sighs, and goes to sit down in one of the chairs away from the computer.

“Just…stay for the night.” He admits, and Winn gets a chair and sits down beside him. Brainy leans against him, and Winn wraps an arm around his shoulders, giving them a slight squeeze.

“I’m here, Brainy.” Winn promises. “Whatever you need, I’ve got you.”

And he does, from when Brainy continues to tell Winn about what he’s gone through to when Winn gives him the details of his own story, and eventually when they wake up together after going to sleep on the couch in J’onn’s office downstairs.

Winn knows that Brainy, as much as he didn’t go about it the way he would’ve liked, did his best in working with him, the first time. And now that Winn feels like a traveler in an antique land, just like he knows Brainy once must have, he also knows he should try his best to help Brainy too.

Seeing Brainy half-asleep now, leaning into him and looking more relaxed than he’s ever seen him before, is worth enough for him, and after hearing everything, spending time putting his previous time with Brainy into a new perspective, Winn wants even more for him to be okay, and to feel that as long as there are people supporting him, he’ll be safe.

And even though he can’t see this through with him all the way, even though Brainy couldn’t have possibly been there for Winn in the future, he knows he’ll still be rooting for him, and that Brainy felt the same just before Winn left.

Brushing aside Brainy’s (now much longer) hair, Winn gently kisses Brainy’s forehead, wondering if this was what Brainy meant to do once.

Whatever the case may have been, he’s happy to do it now for his friend, both while he’s sleeping and once he eventually wakes up.


End file.
